Herero genocide

1939, the day before signing the non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union, Adolf Hitler wrote that he had death squads at the ready to rid Poland of its people in order to gain Lebensraum. “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” he wrote, using the German word Vernichtung for annihilation. It turns out Hitler could have looked in Germany’s own history for an example of intentional extermination. Most people are not aware that in 1904 the Germans attempted to annihilate the Herero people, natives of the German colony of Namibia, in southwest Africa. There can be no quibble that what happened there from 1904 to 1907 was attempted genocide. The order issued by the German Lt. Gen. Lothar von Trotha openly […]